Six centuries before the birth of Christ, people began
to imagine an immense land at the bottom of the world, a
land of marvels, of enormous wealth and mystery. Discovery
is the story of the quest which compelled men in small ships
to traverse unknown seas, to endure extraordinary hardships,
to slowly unveil the sixth continent.

The story begins among Greek philosophers on the shores
of the Mediterranean. It ends two millennia later in the
vast Southern Ocean. Lucidly and concisely, Miriam Estensen
tells an absorbing tale of mapmakers and lonely caravels,
Spanish hidalgos and Dutch merchants, remote coasts and
castaways, buccaneers and dreamers.

At the heart of Discovery is the power of a myth and the
adventures and sacrifices of those who pursued it, for this
is the story of how an imagined place was made real, how
the speculations of visionaries became Terra Incognita and
then Australia.